


Speed Trials

by Bunn1cula



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Canon Dialogue, F/M, Gauda Prime, Kink Meme, LiveJournal Prompt, M/M, Season/Series 04, used in an uncanonly way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:27:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26052682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bunn1cula/pseuds/Bunn1cula
Summary: Written for theLivejournal B7 Kinkmemeprompt: Living on GP - Blake doesn't trust anyone. So he tests them with sex. Alas, he has trusted Avon from the very beginning...
Relationships: Kerr Avon/Roj Blake, Roj Blake/Arlen, Roj Blake/Deva
Comments: 8
Kudos: 8





	Speed Trials

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Elliott Smith. 
> 
> Beta'ed by foreignobjecticus

"Did I pass the test, then?"

"I'm satisfied."

”Yes, you're good at this, aren't you?"

"I'm still alive," Blake groans, slipping out and off of the willowy auburn-haired man in his bed.

He settles onto his side and drops his head onto the pillow. It is cool on his face, refreshing after the physical exertion. The man with him caresses delicate, pale fingers over the ruddy skin of his chest.

"I suppose my erstwhile colleagues no longer share in that happy condition," the man remarks, a thin hint of reproach betraying his light tone.

" _Happy_ condition?"

Deva’s lips quirk into smile, but not before Blake recognizes a fleeting grimace of regret first. "Was it necessary?”

"Yes, Deva," Blake sighs, propping his head up with one hand, "it was necessary."

Deva tosses back his boyish long bangs and rolls his eyes. He touches a finger to Blake's nose and softly kisses his shoulder. After a quiet moment, his affectionate expression turns melancholy. "These stupid games you insist on playing will get someone killed eventually."

Blake looks away. Deva doesn't understand. How could he? It's difficult for Blake to translate his hard-won instincts into words, but he tries, because if anyone deserves the effort, it is Deva. "I have to test each one myself."

Deva gently coaxes Blake's stubbled chin toward his, breaking the thousand-spacial stare Blake has directed to the far wall. "No, you don't."

"All right," Blake snaps, harsher than he'd intended, "I find it difficult to trust. It's a failing, I admit."

Deva ignores the disingenuous bid for pity. "You don't have to do the bounty hunter routine."

"Indulge me."

"Do I have a choice?"

"Oh, there's always a choice, Deva."

"Not for me, there isn't. I said I'd follow you, and I will, until the Federation's finally destroyed." He raises his arm to offer Blake a place to rest in his embrace and Blake accepts.

Blake believes Deva's words, but not his own. He closes his eyes as Deva kisses his forehead, and tries to imagine an unlikely future.

***

"Get up, girl."

"Arlen!" the girl snarls, snatching her jacket up from the ground and clutching it over her breasts. "The name's _Arlen_."

Looking down onto where she lies splayed on the forest floor, Blake steps back and buttons his trousers. "That's the name they're paying for."

"That's right. I made them pay for it. So use, it scum."

She is achingly young, deliciously feral. It had been quick and crude, a brutish, necessary transaction for each of them.

For her, Blake expects, it is probably a chance for survival. She is hard, a little wild, with the bitter edge of someone accustomed to a life spent running. She has a sharpness in her eyes, like she's hiding a weapon she badly wants to use. Even if it's on him, he can work with this. He can use it, bend it to his purpose.

If she'd wanted to kill him, she'd had her chance in the seconds her ferocity had undone him. Instead, it had been only a little death.

She is _so_ young, he sees with more clarity now, practically still a girl, and he stuffs down a rising revulsion at what he has just done. He needs this. He needs her. The final part of the test is telling her the truth.

"Blake, he says tossing her gun back to her. "My name is Roj Blake."

****

There has never been a need for tests with Avon.

Blake had waited to send the signals for Orac to detect until he had something to give Avon—a base, the beginnings of an army. Avon has been hitting out at the Federation hard, but just as before, a ship and a few malcontents are not enough to make a lasting difference. It takes more organization, more guns, more people. Blake has done the work and set it all up, for him.

And so Avon has come, just as Blake had known he would, because it is what Avon has always done.

They meet in the main tracking gallery. It isn't the first time Avon has pointed a gun at Blake, and once again Blake dismisses the pantomime straight away.But this time Avon doesn't change his stance, doesn't drop the rifle, and his expression is frozen in a caricature of horror.

Blake has never seen this Avon before. The blood drains from his head and pools in his gut as he searches this man's face for any glimpse of the one he has known. He finds his voice but it quavers in such hesitation he barely can recognize it as his own. 

"Avon...it's me, Blake."

He moves forward, mirroring Avon's approach, but Avon hunches over, closing back in on himself, and shouts something, but Blake can't hear what it is through the deafening racket of his own heartbeat. Everything is red and blurred except Avon, who stands before him in terrible clarity, clad head to toe in what Blake now recognizes is a portentous black.

Tarrant doesn't understand…Avon doesn't understand--Blake must make him, must show him, because Blake sees now how everything Avon has ever done has been for him. And Blake is finally able to return the favor--everything he has to give now is for Avon, for both of them together, because nothing works as well when they are apart.

He wants to go all the way back and tell Avon everything he should have said from the start. The memories and emotions jumble up inside him, just as they did not long after he recovered his mind, and all he can get out is, "Avon, I was waiting for _you_."

And then Avon brings the gun round and Blake's gut burns once, twice, three times and Blake realizes too late his folly in believing he could convince Avon of anything after leaving him for so long...too long.

His knees buckle and Blake knows he has failed his own test. And that it is all too fitting now that the only man he's ever exempted from his trials would be the one to kill him.

He falters and reaches for Avon, and despite everything, Avon reaches for him in return. There is no hatred in Avon's eyes, only pain. Blake wishes to soothe it away but his body is heavy and doesn’t obey. He uses the last of his breath to sputter Avon's name, sorrowing that it sounds not as a caress, but a curse.


End file.
